The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1887-10-03
TEA, COFFEE AND SUGAR.

How Some of GOtham's Solid Men
Nimbly Hunt the Spry Sixpence.
Part of Wall street is not Wall street at
all. Down by the ferry, around Front
and Water streets, there is no stock and
bond flavor whatever. Things down there
smack of China, of Java, of Brazil, and
of Cuba, but of nothing nearer home.
Down there the big men in tea, coffee,
sugar and mOlasses rule the roast. If
there is any boarding house keeper who
wants to buy the table luxuries by the ton
or the cargo, just drop around, but other
wise stick to the corner grocery. There
is where the solid men of New York and
Brooklyn nimbly hunt the spry sixpence
At home these heavy citizens are never
asked to do anything, but down there on
the market they skip around like Wallets
to MammOn. With a painful of green
coffee beans in one hand and little paper
of Oolong in the other, they jump to
serve their masters whims.
It seems funny to see the millionaire
pumping long fiat stick up and down
through the bunghole of a hogshead Of
molasses on the street, running his dia-
mcnd studded fingers along it, and SCOOP
ing the saccharine treacle into his gold
plugged mouth. He is an expert, but he
cannot lick his fingers any better than the
rude untutOred urchin who steals lesson
at it when the expert turns his back.
Over on the office steps stands man
whose trotters will by and by be spurning
the dust of Central avenue from their
hoofs. Look at him sitting coffee. How
complacently he rattles the sieve. Look
at him watt it from side to side, and toss
Its contents up and down like a pancake.
What is he doing? Blowing the chaff
out of it. It's a sample, and the pur-
chasing jobber is at hand. He has just
roasted a few handf1ls in his own little
rooster in the Office, for he himself
bought the coffee green.
Four times a year-in March, June,
September and December-the Dutch
government sells coffee at public auction
in Padang. The Dutchman there meas
ures his coffee by the picul Q36 pounds)
and values it by the guilder fifty cents),
so the New Yorker just figures out the
equivalent of say, twenty cents a pound,
and cables his limit to his agents, and
they bid the Dutch auctioneer so much
ant no more. The day after the sale
everybody in the trade knows who
bought, how much he bought and what
he bought at. The cOnundrum then is:
What profit is he satisfied with? What
Will he sell at!
One funny thing about the Java coffee
business is that there are about five times
as many pounds of it sold over the
grOcer's counter as there are grown on
the island. AS Mark Twain says, this
would look like a discrepancy or hiatus,
but we've got to accept facts as we find
them.
Coffee from Padang to New York,
oe
or less sweated. This part is all skinned
off in Brooklyn warehouses and afterward
sold as ''skimmings'' to jobbers at a re-
dueed price. It was never known to go
any further than that, because the retail
ers never sell you anything but ''pure
old Government Java"
In the tasting room of large firm of
tea brokers in Water street half a dozen
men Of critical palates sit around re-
volving table slipping tea from delicate
china cups. It's tea party, but what
tea table! No cloth, no milk, no sugar
no gossip! A circle of cups outside of a
ring of canisters, copper kettle of boil
ing water, and that's all-strictly bust
ness. They sip, and they smack and
they spit. A brass spittOon, as high as
the table, and looking like a German
trombone Strengthened out, receives all
the elected liquor.
Some time ago New York started tea
auctions every week, and Chicago is fol-
lowing suit, but tea is a commodity that
loses its favor very easily, and Chicago's
origin probably has good deal
90 do with her failure to rival the me-
Topolis as tea mart. The Wall street
auctions have become quite social af-
tair. Coffee, sandwiches and napkins are
passed around among the guests. When
they sit down facing the auctioneer's ros-
rum, pencils and catalogues in hand, you
might easily imagine them a group of re-
porters sitting in execution on the latest
imported lecturer. 1t is an ordinary
thing for 10000 half chests to be sold |
This means 400, 900 pounds, and when
couple of spoonfuls make a nice cup of
lea look at the delight in store for our
New York Sun.